Considering that anime does not air in 1080p on any Japanese stations and is only available through blu ray, these are pretty clearly just upscales.

Could someone with technical knowledge expand on this? In the past, CR and other sources have said that Bleach was something like 540p, so 720p was sufficient to see it in all its glory. What's the advantage, if any, of 1080p, at least for anime, if the source material is less than 720p anyways? Usually the end user's device (receiver, computer) handles the scaling properly anyways. Is there some advantage to CR doing the upscaling for the end user? Or have things changed on the production/broadcast/source side over in Japan? Thanks

The 1080p version seems a bit sharper than the 720p when viewed full-screen, but artificially so. Unless you have bandwidth flowing from your nether regions and prefer ultra-crisp subtitling, I think 98% of viewers would agree that "1080p" is a waste here.

Maybe I should take that back. There seems to be a lot of people loving the placebo.